As an Oscar nominee and winner of the coveted Director’s Guild Award, The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper is obviously fielding many high-profile directing opportunities. But according to the L.A. Times, Hooper turned down one of the biggest directing jobs in recent memory, that of taking over Iron Man 3 from Jon Favreau. (Shane Black has since stepped up.) A similar situation arose last year with Kathryn Bigelow, who followed her Oscar win for The Hurt Locker by rejecting an offer to direct the forthcoming Spider-Man reboot in favor of her longtime passion project, Triple Frontier. Apparently, only Oscar-winning actors are willing to take part in superhero movies immediately after their wins.

Sources say that ardent fan of European history, Hooper, is however fairly interested in directing another version of Les Misérables, one that would differ from the 1998 film (which happened to feature King’s Speech star Geoffrey Rush) by being based on the Broadway musical. Although he’s yet to officially commit, Hooper would likely be up to the task, having dabbled in other historical epics like Elizabeth I and HBO’s 10-part John Adams miniseries.